The privatisation of hypocrisy

After several minutes of intentionally self-limiting and perfunctory deliberations, the Scottish and U.K. Governments have agreed to privatise the hypocrisy industry. Spokesmen for both parliaments, who refused to give their names in case these were later used to identify them said, “The advancement of complex and mutually contradictory social, economic and political ambitions simultaneously requires a degree of stratospheric detachment from reality only borderline sociopaths in the private sector can deliver.

“While we recognise that the public realm can sometimes exercise extraordinary duplicity and boundless ineffectiveness, when it comes to weasel-like avoidance of accountability and complete obliviousness to serious issues, only the private sector can provide the dedicated avarice, dubiously-obtained cash and complete abdication of social responsibility required to satisfy the demands of an increasingly confused, fragmented and, let’s face it, hopelessly dysfunctional society choking itself to death on bloated expectations and a frankly astonishing sense of individual and collective entitlement.   

“Take the drinks trade, for example. Reputable experts in health, policing and social services can point to a Medusa’s Raft (Géricault’s version) of statistics, supported by an avalanche of verifiable misery and despair only the intervention of powerful hallucinogens could prevent any reasonable mind acknowledging, which indicate that selling tins of industrial-grade cider for less than the price of a Mars Bar® might send out confusing signals to the spiralling number of drug-addled unemployables and chronically-indebted media studies students presently turning most city centres and residential areas into no go areas during and out with office hours.

 “Without millions of people desperately seeking escape from what they see as utterly futile existences - an illusion we would far rather sustained as the alternative could render our positions untenable - thousands of jobs in the alcohol industry could be lost, along with the support of some of our biggest party donors without whom, we would not have the political structures we have today.

“By continuing to place absolutely no restraints on the price of alcohol in off-licences, and allowing large supermarket chains to practically give the stuff away, the blame for the inevitably resultant mayhem can be laid at the door of the private sector. Only then should the elected state intervene to clear up the vomit, blood and broken glass, stitch the wounds and tidy up the social and domestic detritus left in the wake of this flood of insanity engulfing society.”